Silver Cross
by thisisnotreal123
Summary: My version of the reason why Lisbon wears that cross.


**Sorry I haven't updated Mini-me for a while but got this idea in my head when I noticed Lisbon always seems to wear a silver cross - oh and I don't own anything to do with the Mentalist - if I did I'd make sure there wasn't a lag between broadcasts in the USA and UK.**

It was a completely normal day at the CBI office - well, as normal as it could be with Jane on the team. They hadn't had a case for a week, which Jane had solved within the day due to one of his hunches, so all the team were at the end of the tether - apart from Cho who had just increased the amount of books he went through in a week. Lisbon had even resorted to allowing Jane to do his tricks on the team to keep them amused. Jane used this opportunity to delve into Cho's life, since Jane thought he was the most secretive about his private life and therefore the most interesting. So far, Jane had found out that Cho had had his first girlfriend at 15 (which had lasted for a year) and his second at college (to whom he was briefly engaged, before he found out she was cheating on him with her best friend). As a result, Jane accurately predicted that Cho had then focused on his career rather than relationships (rather like Lisbon, Jane commented). Jane had also asked Lisbon three times over the last week if he could hypnotise Rigsby and Van Pelt so they could realise their true feelings at last, to which Lisbon drew the line. What they didn't know was that the last time Jane had asked Lisbon this; Rigsby had overheard the conversation and was pondering acting on his feelings now he knew that Van Pelt felt the same way. In fact, he was about to go out and prepare a picnic to treat her to lunch when Minelli walked in to the bullpen with a grave expression on his face.

"Finally, a case," Jane said hopefully.

"Erm no," Minelli replied, "can I speak to you privately please, Agent Lisbon?"

"Sure," she said as she gestured towards her office, "will my office be okay?"

"Yes"

It was a full ten minutes before Lisbon and Minelli re-entered the bullpen. Jane had spent the whole time trying to eavesdrop on their conversation but soon realised that he couldn't get close enough to hear without alerting them to his presence. He also realised that Minelli's expression and that fact that he requested the conversation to be private meant it was personal. This didn't stop his impatience to find out what it was about but it did mean that he knew that if he wanted to keep his job, he should pull back and wait to be told - however hard it would be.

When Minelli eventually came out of the office, Lisbon quickly told the team that there was still no case and they could go home early before retreating back into her office. Jane decided home didn't seem that attractive at the moment and waited until she left at 6 o'clock to try to confront her about the conversation. However, when she did leave all she said to him was, "I'm not in the mood to be analysed right now, Jane," before she walked out of the bullpen. By the time Jane had got down to the car park, she had already driven off, though he instantly had a very good idea where she'd gone.

Sure enough, he found Lisbon at her home- though he hadn't expected her to be packing a suitcase when he picked the lock to her apartment.

"You leaving me?" Jane said jokingly. It was only after this, which made her turn around, that he saw the tears streaming down her face.

"Hey, what's going on?" Jane said, soothingly to try to calm her down.

"I can't … I can't … I just can't," Lisbon couldn't seem to phrase a sentence, and therefore couldn't get what she meant to say across.

"Then I'll cook you dinner - you can't be leaving straight away - a couple of hours time maybe?"

"Right as always," her sarcasm was just glimpsed but shadowed by her sadness.

The meal included a bottle of wine, and Jane didn't realise how much of a lightweight she was since Lisbon barely drank. Because of this, Jane didn't know what type of drunk she'd be but always thought she'd be a happy, confident drunk when in fact she was emotional. It made him think he'd completely miss-analysed her. Another effect of the alcohol was that Lisbon was able to tell her life story far more willingly than usual. Thus, Jane found out very quickly what the conversation with Minelli had been about earlier.

***************** 10 years earlier (Lisbon is 17)*****************

_Lisbon had run out of her house and taken her dad's car after one too many beatings. She hadn't been able to rescue her brothers but her dad had already been on the way into a drunken stupor when she left. She didn't know why she'd run off - after all, when her dad was asleep or sober she was safe, but she knew she wanted a release. That was the reason she told herself when she found herself at a local club. She'd never been to one before as she wasn't 21 yet but knew from people at school that this particular club didn't really mind about underage customers - profits was all they cared about - so she had no problems getting in. _

_She started to enjoy herself after a while, and felt her stresses start to go as she just concentrated on dancing to the beat. She found a few people from her year - she wouldn't go as far as to describe them as friends - and started to join in with their dancing (and drinking). The drink made her feel so free and confident that she even asked her crush, a boy named Joshua who was in her maths class out, though he kindly turned her down. At that point, another boy she thought she remembered from her school, Liam, came over to her and started to console her. _

"_Hey, he's not good enough for you anyway."_

"_But I love him."_

_Liam offered to buy her a drink to try and calm her down, which she gladly accepted. After they finished drinking, and for reasons Lisbon will never understand, she turned around and kissed him in a very non chaste way. Before things went too far, they agreed to get a cab back to his place - since Lisbon __really__ didn't want to wake her dad up. _

_The next thing she could recall through the fog of memories that night was coming down from their high and then her walking the five miles back to the club at three in the morning - despite Liam repeatedly stating as she hurriedly got dressed that he'd drive her - to drive back home before her dad got up at six. Of course, none of this really came back to Lisbon until two weeks later when she realised she was late and started to wonder why. Before that she'd put that night's events down to a dream. _

_Even though in the back of her mind, she knew what was happening immediately when she was late, it wasn't until she started to show four months later that she finally admitted to herself that she was pregnant. Even then she refused to tell her father the truth, though it wasn't hard to hide her pregnancy from him since he spent most of the time in a drunken stupor and so didn't Lisbon starting to wear her brothers' clothes, which were obviously baggy on her and so hid the bump well. _

_Her brothers knew the truth of course, and were the ones who had come up with the plan to keep Lisbon's pregnancy secret from their father. When she did have the baby, they told their father that she'd gone to stay with a friend for a few days that'd just had a traumatic break-up so needed a full-time shoulder to cry on. He didn't question them. When Lisbon had finally admitted to herself that she was pregnant, she knew immediately that there was no way she could keep the baby as her home was bad enough for three teenagers, let alone a new-born baby. However, she also knew it was now too late for abortion so adoption was her only choice. Fortunately, she was able to find a local adoption agency that was more than willing to take a new-born baby and knowing that she would be giving up the baby as soon as it was born gave Lisbon an incentive not to bond with it and the agency was even more glad when Lisbon asked for a closed adoption (hoping that having no contact with the child would mean it wouldn't be affected by the hell she had to call home). _

_However, she didn't bet on the emotions she would feel when she gave birth to her daughter nearly making her change her mind. She swore she'd never cry as much as she did when she handed her little girl over to social services to be handed to her new parents who were apparently waiting outside the delivery room door. She was so desperate to give her something that she gave the only thing she had left of her mother's - a silver cross on a silver necklace to her and begged the social worker to get the couple to allow her daughter to keep it. _

_After giving her daughter over, she felt so empty but she knew that her brothers would be there to collect her the following morning so tried to come up with some coping mechanisms to fill the void which didn't involve alcohol. She settled on throwing herself into her school work that she'd missed in the week she'd missed before her daughter was born and was already up to date with it all the following morning. She hoped that throwing herself into work would make her forget, like her dad hoped alcohol would numb his pain, but she knew deep inside that nothing would heal the void of giving her daughter away. _

_Afterwards, she saved up every cent she could get her hands on so she could buy an exact copy of the necklace that she'd seen in the jewellers two weeks after she'd given birth. She wasn't sure, but she thought the jeweller might have seen through the story she told him to the truth as to why she wanted the necklace, but if he did it only made him more willing to take it off display and keep it on reserve for her. It took her six months to be able to set enough money without her dad realising to be able to buy that necklace. When she handed over the money, she put on the necklace and promised to herself never to take it off. She'd kept that promise ever since. _

****************Present Day*****************

Jane was shocked at Lisbon's story to say the least - he'd have never guessed that she had a daughter, albeit one that she'd given up for adoption. But the story still didn't explain why she was so keen to leave though it turned out there was more to the story than just what she had just told him.

Her daughter's adoptive parents had moved to the UK when she was five since her adoptive father, who was English, had got a new job in London. Although Lisbon knew deep down that it was probably just a case of bad luck, her daughter's life mirrored her own. Her adoptive mother had been killed in a hit and run when she was seven and the father had then turned to alcohol. It took three years for the alcohol to kill him and it was a week before the alarm was sounded as that was when the girl took to begging on neighbours' doors for food. She'd thought her dad was just asleep. The death meant the girl was now alone as neither of her adoptive parents had any close family either in the UK or USA. One of the police officers, who hadn't known that the girl was adopted, had run a DNA sample through every available database to try and find relatives so that the girl didn't have to grow up in care. Of course, this had found a match to Lisbon, and it was only when they realised that Lisbon was her biological mum that they realised that the girl was adopted. By this time, however, they had already sent a message over to the CBI to see if she would be willing to take care of the child. This had meant Lisbon had been forced to explain everything to Minelli, though he'd helped her to realise that no matter what had happened to both Lisbon and her daughter before, together they can both overcome their nightmares. In fact, it emerged that although the wills of the daughter's parents were slightly outdated, they did include a clause allowing Lisbon to look after their daughter if they both died before the girl turned 18 and Lisbon was willing to become her legal guardian. This was the reason why Lisbon was packing - she was leaving for London at three the following morning.

Jane had realised something throughout the conversation. Lisbon had never referred to her daughter by name, which he thought was a kind of now automatic coping mechanism to distance herself from the child that she'd never been able to love.

"What's her name?"

Lisbon looked shocked as she'd presumed she'd used it during the course of the conversation, "Cara."

"Well, I look forward to meeting Cara when you bring her back to Sacramento."


End file.
